# Scenes that traumatized you as a child **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 24, 2004, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843 "2004-10-24T01:58:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![jsc1953](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5daacb/32.png) [@jsc1953](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jsc1953)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/121 "2004-10-26T01:43:54Z")
> [@Wile E](#): > > …it (Darby O’Gill) is a rather scary movie. It may have scared me more if I had been younger when I first saw it, I think I was in my early teens when I saw it on TV. I can vouch – I was 5 when I saw it, on The Wonderful World of Disney. I wouldn’t stay in the same living space as the banshee – I actually went outside and sat on the porch. The Morlocks in \*\*The Time Machine \*\* (1960 version); particularly the scene where you see one’s body decomposing as the traveler goes forward in time. Freaked me out quite badly. ---
**Author:** ![audreyayn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@audreyayn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/audreyayn)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/122 "2004-10-26T02:06:15Z")
I’ve thought of another, really embarrassing one: **Gremlins**. My brother used to make fun of me for this, but without even watching the movie, seeing those things freaked me out. Strange, 'cause usually I like weird creatures. Later, when I saw the movie, I was traumatized by the girl’s father’s death. Father disappeared on Christmas Eve, and then we noticed this _terrible smell_ coming from the chimney. We thought a raccoon had died in there or something, but when they pulled it out, it was Dad, dressed up like _Santa Claus_. :eek: ---
**Author:** ![shamrock227](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@shamrock227](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shamrock227)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 2:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/123 "2004-10-26T02:15:17Z")
> [@vivalostwages](#): > > **Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory** : > I’m curious to see what Tim Burton will do with the material. [slight hijack] I’m not. I wish he would have an accident that would erase the idea from his memory. I love that movie as is and see no reason for it to be redone ☹ \ I should somehow stop it from being made! \ . When it gets released I’m going to be forced to pout and have a snit - that won’t be pretty 😉 [/hijack] …back to your regularly scheduled topic… ---
**Author:** ![cbawlmer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/71e660/32.png) [@cbawlmer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cbawlmer)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/124 "2004-10-26T02:55:48Z")
Wow, I always thought I was the only one dorky enough to be scared of Large Marge. Sometimes this board is like therapy. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 3:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/125 "2004-10-26T03:29:59Z")
**The Horror Chamber of Doctor Faustus** [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053459/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053459/) By some bizarre quirk of TV programming, this showed up on local NY television when I was a kid, so I watched it. At home. Alone, ne Saturday night. The film is about a doctor who kidnaps young girls, hoping to transplant the skin from their faces onto that of his scarred daughter. There’s a scene where they slowly outline the part of the face they want, then carefully make incisions around the eyes, lips, and the outside edge of the face. All bloodless, but chilling in the implications. Then they insert some forceps and pull off the skinf of the face, right into the camera, so it looks like a mask. How’s that for traumatic? As for you folks who were spooked by **Poltergeist** , let me ell you this story. I saw Poltergeist on a date. It was in a cheap theater that was run by two people. It used to be a porno theater, but even the porno people had moved out. The place was a mess, and probably a fire trap. The wo people running it sold tickets, then sold resfreshments, then ran the film. While they were running the film, they locked the ront doors, so no one could sneak in. During one of the scarier “ghost” sequences, a little boy ran screaming up the aisle and to the front door, s he pulled on it to get out – _and it was locked!_ Closest I ever saw a six year old come to a heart attack. ---
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/126 "2004-10-26T04:50:39Z")
I will definitely third **Watership Down**. What used to really scare me in it was the Black Rabbit of Death. In the little cartoon prologue to the film, it bounces around from rabbit to rabbit, killing them one at a time and turning them blood red! Anyone remember that? And I thought it was a kids film. :smack: :eek: Another film I just remembered was the Rankin/Bass **The Hobbit**. The deep voices of the background singers used to so frighten me (“Far over Misty Mountains cold, to dungeons deep and caverns old, we must away ere break of day, to seek the pale enchanted gold”), as did the goblins. Their huge gaping mouths with the big teeth, and Gollum too, he scared me with his flashing eyes, lol. Despite all that I loved the film and still saw it many times. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Nurobath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a88e57/32.png) [@Nurobath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nurobath)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/127 "2004-10-26T06:12:37Z")
Reading through this I remembered another one. It wasn’t the movie itself, it was the TV commercial for the movie Magic. I can’t really even remember the commercial now because it scared me so badly when I was a kid that I would run out of the room with my fingers in my ears whenever it came on. I think it was the dummy’s voice doing the naration and it was just creepy as hell. I absolutely COULD NOT watch that commercal. Oh yeah, and the little guys from Phantasm. Was it The Legend of Boggy Creek or the Sasquatch movie mentioned earlier that had the scene where someone was hiding in the bathroom and the monster came up to the window and banging the hell out of everything? Whichever, that scared the shit out of me and I certainly didn’t want to go to the bathroom for a while. I guess I got freaked out by a few more things than I thought. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![ouryL](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ouryl/32/6067_2.png) [@ouryL](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ouryL)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 7:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/128 "2004-10-26T07:33:59Z")
The Brain from Planet Arous gave me nightmares as a kid. When it finally appeared again when I was a teen, my brothers wondered why I wanted to see such a lame movie. :eek: :eek: ---
**Author:** ![LorieSmurf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a587f6/32.png) [@LorieSmurf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LorieSmurf)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 7:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/129 "2004-10-26T07:43:33Z")
> [@Phase42](#): > > I > Then there was my baby sister and _Poltergeist_. The movie was being shown on the TV at our neighbor’s house. My sister must have been about four years old, and she was watching along with me and my other sister. She was okay with it, because mst of what she was seeing was pretty tame. But then the scene came on where the guy’s washing his face in the sink, and he looks in the mirror and starts tearing his face off. My baby sister’s eyes got as big as saucers and she hollered, “I’m getting out of here!” She took off like a shot, back home. For years after that, my other sister and I only had to say the world “poltergeist” to get Jessi all bent out of shape 😃 That’s the scene I thought of when I saw the thread title. GAH!!! That scene disturbed me more than the kid-eating tree or the clown or the bodies in the muddy pool… ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/130 "2004-10-26T08:03:57Z")
Roald Dahl’s _books_ were usually pretty disturbing. But the Oompa-Loompas never bothered me in the movie or book. ---
**Author:** ![Dung\_Beetle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dung_beetle/32/7945_2.png) [@Dung\_Beetle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dung_Beetle)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/131 "2004-10-26T12:51:30Z")
OOoo, remembered another goody: Vincent Price in House of Wax. The scene where the girl freaks out and starts pounding on his chest and the wax mask starts breaking up and falling off to reveal his terribly burned face… Mommy! ---
**Author:** ![Sleel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/73ab20/32.png) [@Sleel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sleel)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/132 "2004-10-26T14:12:14Z")
There was a movie back in the mid- or early-80s that freaked me out. Some lady had a house full of dolls and the dolls came to life and tried to kill you when you weren’t looking. Ugh! I couldn’t stand to be around dolls for a long time after that. One of my aunts had some dolls in her guest room. When I went to stay with her after seeing that movie I asked her to lock them away somewhere or there was no way I would sleep in that room. A TV series, **Friday the 13th,** which had nothing to do with the movies, was often creepy. It was only on really late at night, which didn’t help anything. I think I was somewhere in my really early teens or 'tweens, so I was not really that young but there were some scenes that would sometimes get me. Watching **The Exorcist** by myself on a stormy evening when I was 14 ranks up there in the top stupid things I’ve done to myself. I think I almost peed myself when she spun her neck all the way around. The horrible crunching sounds were worse than the visuals. The flashes of demonic faces in really brief cutscenes worked really damn well on me then. Even though I knew that I’d seen something like a face I couldn’t really fully picture it, which was of course the whole idea. [tangent]One scene from a book that is probably almost impossible to translate to film is the scene in **The Shining** where the old lady gets out of the bath and tries to catch Danny. I read that book when I was 12 and, of course, not too long after I read that scene I had to go to the bathroom. We had an opaque shower curtain in the bath. I gave serious thought to sneaking outside and peeing in the back yard. I had to work my nerve up to even go in there. When I finally did go in, I hesitated for a long time, listened hard to make sure there was nothing there, finally whipped back the curtain…then gasped in relief and almost collapsed when she didn’t lunge out and get me. Then I had to stand in front of the toilet for almost five minutes while I calmed down enough to let go. While Kubrick’s scene was really well done, it was nothing compared to what I’d done to myself in my own head while reading that book.[/tangent] ---
**Author:** ![luluBahrain](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e5b9ba/32.png) [@luluBahrain](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/luluBahrain)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/133 "2004-10-26T17:23:22Z")
I have one that no one has mentioned. “Rats of Nimh” Scared the crap out of me and I have no idea why. Also, in “The Rescuers” when they lower Penny into that hole and she is sitting in the bucket. Yech! ---
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/134 "2004-10-26T17:33:15Z")
[QUOTE=Nurobath] Reading through this I remembered another one. It wasn’t the movie itself, it was the TV commercial for the movie Magic. I can’t really even remember the commercial now because it scared me so badly when I was a kid that I would run out of the room with my fingers in my ears whenever it came on. I think it was the dummy’s voice doing the naration and it was just creepy as hell. I absolutely COULD NOT watch that commercal. QUOTE] “Magic is fun…_when you’re **dead** _!!” I love that movie. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eyebrows_0f_doom/32/3119_2.png) [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/135 "2004-10-26T17:36:00Z")
> [@Nurobath](#): > > Reading through this I remembered another one. It wasn’t the movie itself, it was the TV commercial for the movie Magic. I can’t really even remember the commercial now because it scared me so badly when I was a kid that I would run out of the room with my fingers in my ears whenever it came on. I think it was the dummy’s voice doing the naration and it was just creepy as hell. I absolutely COULD NOT watch that commercal. "Magic is fun… _When you’re **dead**!!"_ I love that movie. 😃 Anthony Hopkins is great in that. Really creepy. (There we go. And that’s why I should preview. :smack: ) ---
**Author:** ![tremorviolet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e47774/32.png) [@tremorviolet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tremorviolet)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/136 "2004-10-26T17:50:32Z")
> [@vivalostwages](#): > > **Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory** : I was absolutely scarred for life (almost) by the tunnel scene with the scary stuff on the walls, and by the scene where Augustus Gloop gets sucked up the tube after falling into the chocolate. The tube scene was the _worst_. I had nightmares for weeks imagining how it felt to be trapped in a tube without being able to breath as you sloooowly suffocated. I _still_ can’t watch the movie and, despite my admiration of johnny Depp, there’s no way in heck I’m gonna go see the remake. Another movie that scared the crap outta me was **Disney’s Song of the South**. They don’t show it anymore ‘cause it’s really not PC at all but I saw it on TV when I was very young. Something about the kid being hit by the bull as he ran across the field callin’ for Uncle Remus terrified me. **Space 1999** had an episode where the moon colony met up with a bunch of travelers who used suspended animation to transverse the galaxy. They were gonna take a regular cast member with them but, at the last moment, a desperate guy forced his way into the pod. The last shot of the show was the guy waking up, trapped inside the pod (the suspended animation didn’t work because it was calibrated for the other person) screaming. :eek: In fifth grade, I caught a horror movie on TV in the middle of the afternoon. The only scene I can remember had a guy telling a woman he’d be “bad” and “perhaps, he should take his eyes out.” And then he _did_. :eek: I have no idea what the movie was but, geez, a guy taking out his eyes with his fingers… ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/137 "2004-10-26T18:07:02Z")
There was some old goofy comedy that I saw as a kid, involving a Jekyll-and-Hyde serum: get injected with it, and you turn into a rampaging fuzzy werewolf-like creature. Near the end of the movie, someone sits down in a cushy chair, not realizing there’s a needle full of the serum in the chair, jumps up, and runs down the street as a monster. I’ve got an intense phobia of needles. I checked my chairs for needles for months after that scene. Oh, and a couple years ago for Hallowe’en, I talked with a bunch of folks, and decided to dress up as what everyone agreed was the scariest creature ever: a flying monkey. I’ve never been more terrifying on Hallowe’en :). Daniel ---
**Author:** ![Idlewild](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/8491ac/32.png) [@Idlewild](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Idlewild)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/138 "2004-10-26T18:13:36Z")
The cybermen from Dr. Who, but even more than that, the cybermats, used to terrify me, and because they looked like platypuses, I also harbored a dread of monotremes, both platypuses and echidnas. I was convinced that all of these things (cybermats and monotremes) were lurking in my bedroom and the family bathroom. In my defense, I must have been no older than five or six at the time. ---
**Author:** ![Superdude](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/superdude/32/13450_2.png) [@Superdude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superdude)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/139 "2004-10-26T18:21:30Z")
Not even a visual, but an audio experience that freaked me out: Several years ago, I was laying in bed, drifting off to sleep. I had my CD player going and was listening to what is, now, in retrospect, a rather embarrassing CD. It was _Vince Neil_, the solo album from the former lead singer of Motley Crue (Hey, this WAS several years ago). I’m JUST trailing off to sleep, late at night, as the CD ends. And, after about 15-20 seconds of pure silence, a child’s voice says, very clearly, “Oh, no.” Scared the f\*ck out of me. ---
**Author:** ![Kizarvexius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/da6949/32.png) [@Kizarvexius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kizarvexius)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2004, 7:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843/140 "2004-10-26T19:28:44Z")
> [@Jack Sayid](#): > > :eek: > > Yikes! That too! > > This, combined with the _In Search Of_, umm, “documentary” 😉 , freaked me out completely. I was terrified of Sasquatch! He was out there…in the woods, behind my house…waiting. > > I had nightmares for months. Horrible, relentless nightmares. > > Even now, just hearing Leonard Nimoy’s voice brings back terrifying Sasquatch visions! Yup. The Six Million Dollar Man versus Bigfoot scared me out of my seven year-old senses. Also the episodes with the tank-like space probe. Eeeeek. And, yes, a couple of episodes of _In Search Of…_ freaked me out. The two that come to mind were the episodes on Dracula and the Yeti. The Dracula episode included a couple of scenes from _Nosferatu_…enough said. But one scene in the Yeti episode showed a recreation of some explorer’s account where he’s looking out his tent at night and one of the “boulders” nearby suddenly stands up and runs into the darkness. Brrrrrrr. Add me to the list of kids traumatized by the banshee from _Darby O’Gill and the Little People_. The clown in _Poltergeist_ didn’t bother me nearly as much as the face ripping, the carnivorous tree, and that weird white spider-like thing. Then there was the day when I was about ten years old and watched _The Man Who Saw Tomorrow_ (a documentary on Nostradamus) on HBO. Now **that** scared the ever-loving SHIT out of me. Sure, let’s just subject our innocent little mind to visions of Armageddon. As a teen, I found a scene in the dreadful remake of _The Blob_ very disturbing. The one where the teenage girl’s little brother gets sucked into the blob, then momentarily disgorged as a screaming, half-skeletonized mass. God, but that gave me nightmares. Now that I’ve given plenty of ammunition to any psy-ops specialists out there who intend to torture me for information, I think I’ll quit. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/scenes-that-traumatized-you-as-a-child/270843.md?page=8)